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Category Archives: Scientific computing

In this post I’ll report on running the application “mc09_7TeV.107691….” from the GridPilot app store. In the case of NorduGrid and WLCG, the ATLAS software is preinstalled on the resources. In the case of GridFactory, the jobs run inside a CernVM appliance with ATLAS software loaded through the AFS network file system. The input dataset consisted of 26 files totaling … Read the rest

In this post, I’ll take a look at some more runs of the “atlas_d3pd_boildown” application available in the GridPilot app store. The difference w.r.t. the runs described in a previous post is that this time I ran on cloud as opposed to grid resources. On dedicated hardware and on two public clouds, Amazon’s EC2 and Cabo’s Irigo cloud, I … Read the rest

Professionally, I recently had to set up some improvised storage, making use of 6 machines, each with a 1 TB disk that was not used for anything else. Preferably with a common name space. Pooling such 6 disks into a common storage solution may sound like a common, mundane task, but there does not appear to be any open-source … Read the rest

In this post, I’ll take a look at some runs of the POV-Ray application available in the GridPilot app store: To import this app, just choose “File → Import application”, navigate to the relevant folder and click “OK”.

This application is a bit more sophisticated than the one used for the simple benchmarking described in a previous post. Now, … Read the rest

This example is special in that it does not depend on any preinstalled software package (runtime environment), but includes a precompiled binary. This binary will of course only for certain run on the system it was compiled on. We compiled on Debian Sarge and Scientific Linux 5 and run on all back-ends: a local virtual machine, GridFactory without virtualization and … Read the rest

Here is a video I put together to demo how to use GridPilot to run computations on a GridFactory cluster:

The demo uses the default input files – which are 12 royalty free music files found on incompetech.com. This can be changed – by right-clicking on the input dataset, “music_files”, and choosing “Import file(s)”. If you’ve already imported the … Read the rest

Given the popularity of the iPhone, an interesting use of a batch system is conversion of movie files from the AVI to the MPG4 format. In this post I’ll explain 3 ways doing this with GridPilot. Which way you prefer will likely depend on the number and size of files you want to convert and the power … Read the rest

To gauge the performance of both GridFactory and virtualization layers in a high-CPU/low-throughput setting, we chose the standard ray-tracing program POV-Ray and a standard benchmarking image, shipped with the program.

The standard image that was rendered.

This example is a fairly naive benchmarking exercise consisting simply in rendering the same image with POV-Ray 20 times. Each POV-Ray job used a … Read the rest

This example demonstrates the use of GridPilot in data processing in high energy physics (HEP). It makes extensive use of some HEP-specific technologies, that are incapsulated in GridPilot in the form of plugins: the ATLAS DB plugin and the NG and GLite computing system plugins. The jobs chosen are so-called … Read the rest

In the context of the Nordic HPC community, I’ve been involved in some discussions on the applicability of cloud computing in HPC. Also in the blogosphere, the subject is receiving some attention (e.g. at bigdatamatters.com and hpcwire.com).

Here are some comments of mine:

A few times recently I’ve come across an argument that can be summarized by the following … Read the rest

Last week I gave a general talk on cloud computing at the yearly conference “Softwareudvikling på Tværs”, arranged by Teknologisk Institut. The purpose was to inform about what (I consider) cloud computing is, where it is currently used and where it is headed.

The arrangement was well organized and included many interesting talks.

Together with “Dansk Grid Forum” I’m organizing a small cloud symposium to be held here at the Niels Bohr Institute on May 12. The idea is to have some debate on the prospects for clouds in scientific computing. Sign up here if you’re interested in attending.

Just came across this page. So the Open Group actually has a “Batch Environment Services and Utilities” specification. As far as i can see GridFactory implements a good set of the specified services and utilities.